bigideas

Show Me The Argument has an interesting post about the ethical force of “distress”. The general idea is that if someone causes distress to someone else, that’s bad, but the problems start when we’re not convinced the other person had any right to be distressed.

This is obviously an important issue because it happens all the time. We legislate against certain kinds of talk in the workplace, for instance, because they cause distress to co-workers. But those who we thereby curtail do lose a right to freedom of speech, which is a pretty important right, so we’d better be sure the people who were distressed were distressed for good reason.

And the problem is that nobody can give a good rule for telling when somebody is legitimately distressed, and so the act that caused the distress ought to be censured, and when they’re just being silly.

Wertheimer’s suggestion, as summarised by Show Me The Argument, is that somehow we can tell the difference between “natural” aversions and “unnatural” ones, but on its face that seems absurd. First, we have no way of telling the difference, as the post points out. Second, even if we did, there’s no a priori reason to prefer nature over nurture in this case. Third, I’m not sure there is a strong dichotomy between nature and culture anyway, not a strong enough one to found this distinction on.

In many cases “distress” is the only negative effect of an action that we deem unethical. In other cases, though, it’s perfectly possible for someone to cause distress in someone else without committing an unethical act, as when I cook a meal for someone I don’t know well which they don’t like, but they feel compelled to choke it down anyway out of politeness.

Clearly in that situation I haven’t acted unethically, but out of ignorance. I’m not sure how that’s different from someone who tells a homophobic joke at work, unaware that someone in earshot is going to be upset by it. Yet in this situation we’d like to say that the person did something wrong.

How is telling a joke you don’t like different form cooking a meal you don’t like? Let’s assume both are intended to please their recipients, and neither are intended to cause distress. There might also be an element of showing-off and other selfishness, too, but that applies to the dinner as much to the joke.

It would be nice to say that there was something intrinsically wrong with the joke, such that telling it to a group of fellow homophobes would be just as wrong. Similarly, in the original situation, the joke-teller might decide to tell a racist joke which might happen to offend nobody in earshot, but we would still like to say they’d done something wrong.

I wonder whether we need to separate this sort of thing from ethics entirely. Ethics is about how people behave towards one another, and the effects of what they do are always going to be important. Yet in cases where “distress” is the main factor it may be that the ethical approach is unhelpful. Like Wertheimer, though, I’m afraid I have to shrug and admit I don’t know which approach would be better.